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Glad Fringe is back on. I can finally get my wife to change the channel from HGTV. By way of explanation - we just bought a house and a doing a lot of the renovations ourselves. She likes watching other people doing their reno's on TV. Ostensibly, it's for "inspiration" but since we've had our paint, fixtures, hardware, etc, picked out forever I think she just wants to see people having a harder time of it than us.

Otherwise, I watch a lot of live sports lately. I do watch BBT and find it funny, even if some of the humor are cliches to us nerds/geeks/gamers.

I'm a fan of Warehouse 13 and Treme, but those are on in the summer.

Lately, though, I've watched a lot of That 70s Show whenever I land on the re-runs. I wasn't a fan of it while it was on, but about 4-5 years ago, one of the stations ran a marathon of it over Thanksgiving, and I got hooked that day - watched about 4 hours of it while prepping dinner and avoiding blowout football games. For Christmas that year, I ended up with the first 4 seasons on DVDs and watched them straight through in about 3 weeks.

At work, I've had my personal laptop on the desk with me and I've been rewatching the entire series of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which I consider to be the high-water mark of TV drama from the past 10 years or so, and have NBC ever since they canned it.

Is Fringe any good? I only saw a few trailers and it didn't look interesting enough to investigate. Is it x-files ish?

There seem to be so many great shows around now, and i have nowhere near enough time to check them all out. I'm sure there never used to be this many good shows back in the 70s/80s/90s. They used to be few and far between.

Actually, i was recently thinking that there are too many good/complex shows around that you have to invest in... it'd be nice to have something accessible and dumb like Buck Rogers or Xena.
Anyone have any recommendations for:

- A modern Xena?
- A modern Buffy. (How's Vampire Diaries? there's so many twilight clones around now it's hard to find anything good. (doesn't have to be vampires btw).
- A modern Farscape/Firefly

Fringe is excellent, I really didn't like the first half of the first season because it did seem like a poor mans The X Files but I think everyone said that and the witers kicked the storyline into gear, and it made the series awesome. It basically has great characters, an emotional place, and some ridiculously cool sci-fi storylines.

Heres an episode guide if you want to skip all the boring episodes and want to get to the good stuff(skip to the end where it says addendum to new viewers)

I think Spartacus is the modern Xena from hearing about it and reviews, it is a lot more bloodier and has lots more explicit sex then what Xena did mind.[/COLOR]

I believe Spartacus has some of the same production staff as Xena/Hercules and of course, Xena (Lucy Lawless) is one of the main characters, and rarely an episode goes by in which she doesn't get naked.

Spartacus is great though, it tricks you into thinking its a blood and boobs teenage-boy's favourite show, but turns out to be a well plotted and fairly deep drama (i'm paraphrasing Charlie Brooker here tbh, but he expressed it rather well)

Anyone watching Alcatraz? It seems to me to be a bit to procedural, I like my long fornm storytelling and people getting pissed of Lost probably shouldn't apply since its another JJ Abrams drip feed mystery which doesn't drip feed you enough. But there is something there that still keeps me watching it, maybe I like Hurley so much(yes I know he has a real name and its a different character but its Hurley!). The thing is though the 1960s flashbacks are the best bit of it, and to be honest the procedural elements are the worst, I kind of want the focus to be on the 1960s prison stuff, an Oz 60s version if you will. Maybe its the actors are better or the characters are a lot more interesting in the 60s sections.

Hmm i have to say no to that, i mean I love Farscape dontt get me wrong but i think the themes of Battlestar Galactica are a lot more powerful.

What themes, exactly? Religion? Covered in Farscape in a multitude of ways. Survival? Got that in bucket loads. Character development? Farscape's far eclipsed anything BSG did both in depth and variety; when characters were down, they weren't just down, but beaten, bloodied and more importantly, on the loosing side. In BSG? You get fat! Yeaaaaah. I knock BSG only because I'm ambivalent to it; I'm glad I watched it once to see what it was and it kept me going till the end, but the only thing it had over Farscape was clearly a superior budget and whilst the CG won't look as dated as quickly, I'd say it was an insignificant 'win'.

Anyhow, I've proceeded to finish off season 2. The chills. The descent into "How can we really screw up all of the characters?" takes off with a ridiculous pace, only for me to remember the end-of-season cliff-hanger AND all of season 3's depression. The concluding 3-parter is so well executed, but even that is topped by the last episode, 'Die Me, Dichotomy'. I remember watching it when it was first on what, around ten years ago? I had exactly the same feeling going into it, that sense of dread. Despite knowing what would happen, it was still a punch to the gut and highlights the magnificent acting of Ben Browder, Claudia Black and Wayne Pygram. Still, I have too many games and DVDs in backlog to carry on with the third season immediately, so I'm taking a small wait. Yup, I'm making my own cliff-hanger gap, even though I know how it all gets resolved.

Before watching this back, I heralded Firefly as the best sci-fi I'd seen, but no. That was wrong. Farscape is simply excellent and embraces its crazy for all its worth and then some.

Uh, wouldn't Farscape and Firefly be the modern Farscape and Firefly? It's been less than ten years since either ended.

Originally Posted by The JG Man

What themes, exactly? Religion? Covered in Farscape in a multitude of ways. Survival? Got that in bucket loads. Character development? Farscape's far eclipsed anything BSG did both in depth and variety; when characters were down, they weren't just down, but beaten, bloodied and more importantly, on the loosing side. In BSG? You get fat! Yeaaaaah. I knock BSG only because I'm ambivalent to it; I'm glad I watched it once to see what it was and it kept me going till the end, but the only thing it had over Farscape was clearly a superior budget and whilst the CG won't look as dated as quickly, I'd say it was an insignificant 'win'.
...
Before watching this back, I heralded Firefly as the best sci-fi I'd seen, but no. That was wrong. Farscape is simply excellent and embraces its crazy for all its worth and then some.

Farscape is SO ACE. Crackers Don't Matter! Revenging Angel! Won't Get Fooled Again! It's definitely head and shoulders above Galactica. Galactica's not even really any better than Space: Above and Beyond.

Blake's 7 forever, though. I didn't actually watch it until a while after I'd seen Farscape (given the impossibility of getting a legitimite copy in Canada), but, uh, Grayza. Servalan. Need I say more? Well, how about the series ending? How about Blake? That episode is so Farscape. The general weirdness of the universe? Unfortunately it takes some serious suspension of disbelief to get past the fact that Blake's 7 had all the effects budget of a late night infomercial at times.

What themes, exactly? Religion? Covered in Farscape in a multitude of ways. Survival? Got that in bucket loads. Character development? Farscape's far eclipsed anything BSG did both in depth and variety; when characters were down, they weren't just down, but beaten, bloodied and more importantly, on the loosing side.

I ddo believeyou were talking about Battstar Galactica as well, god the second and the start of third season. The first season with that episode 44 minutes, the absolutely brutal revolution that happens in the fourth season. Powerful stuff!

Without getting into total spoiler territory too much; the first episode where they were timed to their jumps was well done, I won't deny that. Hell, I'm not saying the show was categorically bad, although it definitely had some weak moments (just like Farscape, but even the filler episodes were quality). The problem with the start of the third season though was that it could have been done well if it'd have bee subtly handled. As it was, I felt like I was being hit on the head with a brick while being shouted at that "Humans sometimes do bad things to survive." Was the battle sequence that ended that arc cool? Sure!..but to what end? It was a cool set-piece, but that was kind of the pinnacle of the show and one of the few stand-out moments.

That same idea in Farscape was handled far better due to using sleight of hands; the amount of crap Crichton does to survive that seemingly comes with inevitable destruction doesn't go unmentioned, but you see it reflected in him. Even then, these things didn't always work completely successfully, which gave it that air of authenticity; the crew is flawed and it shows. I didn't really get this idea in BSG; Adama was basically perfect, apart from his moustache.

And, by 'brutal revolution', I can only imagine you're talking about [spoiler]who the 'final five' were[/spoiler]? I thought that was hilariously awful. It was like they picked random characters, with no justification, to shoe-horn in the bizarre notion they had. I think BSG was satisfactory drama, but it was a poor sci-fi. Farscape excelled in both those categories.

Oh no I didn't mean that I meant to two episodes which focused on the revolution of the prison guy tuned politician against the ship.

I agree that the main storyline kind of got a bit ridiculous and I do think that it kind of wasted its potential after season 2. I just think that BSG is to me a lot more powerful then Farscape was, to be honest i didn't really get the powerful themes that Farscape was about, but I was a bit younger back then so I might have to rewatch it to see.

I didn't care much about the actual space battles, although they were quite nice (and they use newtonian physics, which is always a plus). But the story and the characters, now, that's great stuff.

You may despise this or that character for whatever reason you might have. But everyone should enjoy watching the development of Gaius Baltar. I don't want to spoil anyone, so I won't. But his lines are brilliant, the actor's amazing and the situations he ends up in (and especially the way he gets out of them)... really, great stuff.

And the music. The score is extensive and the quality ranges from average/good to masterpiece (this may be a hyperbole, but you catch my drift). Bear McCreary is a great composer. He's so great I played through Dark Void, and that game was absolutely awful (although it's so awful it ends up being fun, especially when you play with a friend beside you so you can both make fun of what's going on).

I heard BSG really went downhill after the 2nd(?) season. Where they were suddenly living under cylon rule. I got that far, and didn't really like the look of where it was heading... so i stopped there. Did they manage to pull it back from the brink, because some parts of that show were awesome (the jumping every few minutes one in particular).

I've been watching 'Borgen' on the BBC 4 which is a Danish political drama. It's pretty good. Made by the same people who were behind the killing. Denmark's not a huge country so a lot of familiar faces from that series turn up in roles which can be a little disconcerting in initially, but it's well acted and an interesting take on true coalition politics in effect Vs the BS we have to put up with under the Tories. Still available via the BBC Iplayer if you fancy Marathoning it (UK only though): -

I heard BSG really went downhill after the 2nd(?) season. Where they were suddenly living under cylon rule. I got that far, and didn't really like the look of where it was heading... so i stopped there. Did they manage to pull it back from the brink, because some parts of that show were awesome (the jumping every few minutes one in particular).

The first few episodes of Season 3 were really pretty tense, but after that the entire show spirals into a madness, the biggest flaw of which is this 'final five' story line that essentially undermined the earlier actions of a number of characters throughout the show. I stuck with it to the end. but it was a real disappointment tbh given how brightly the show started off.

I think they key problem with a lot of TV writing is that they tend to do their world building as they go along and subsequently a lot of 'garbage' gets introduced as a series progresses in terms of mythologyand then the writers find themselves having to justify why things are that way (it seemed cool at the time, but doesn't hold up under scrutiny) . BSG suffered from this in the latter stages, but LOST is probably the biggest offender by far.

I would say its good just to do the first 4 and last 4 episodes of season 3 and stop season 4 after they do the two parter revolution episodes because there is some good points in both those seasons but they are very weak seasons...and don't even get me started on the ending of it.